Siemen's SE567 is the worst gateway

So I've been using this POS gateway for over half a year and I am fed up with it. I originally got this router when I signed up for the Telus Enhanced Internet (or something like that). Sign-up isn't really correct actually because I was already with Telus, but they were having a promotion and I wanted in because it was so cheap. Anyways, at the time I was already using a gateway from 2wire. A good gateway with no real problems.

So when I get my internet upgraded I was told I didn't have to do anything because I already had a gateway and I should just keep using the internet. So when it was upgraded the day they said it would be, my internet connection became SUPER SLOW. WTF? You call this enhanced speed? So I figured it might a gateway problem so I decided to switch to the SE567 POS gateway. Instantly, things went really quick and I was like good solved that problem.

Only a few days later, I suddenly became unable to connect to the wireless internet. It appeared once the wireless internet was encrypted, my vista laptop would no longer be able to connect. No other computers had problems. All my XPs, and Linux machines no problems. Only vista computers had problem.

So I literally resorted to using cable and stealing...no wait...borrowing wireless from my neighbours. This worked for a bit until my neighbours wireless started disappearing or I was just wasn't able to connect to it. So I finally decided to stop procasinating with the issue and try to tackle the problem once and for all.

I read article after article about trying to solve this problem and then tried solution after solution...none of which worked. Pissed off I just decided to switch back to my old router in hopes that the old speed problem wouldn't suffice. And once I did, the internet speed was fine and more importantly I could connect to the internet!!!!

So just some conclusions:

1. I really don't know what caused the problem. Could be Vista, the router itself, the encryption (no encryption lead to no problem with access), ethernet hardware which in term means DELL because all the vista laptops were Dell...too many factors


2. Siemen's SE567 gateway is a POS

Totally awesome new Roger's Plan

Ok so it's been insanely long since I last posted on this blog, but I felt it was appropriate to share my latest excitement on my new phone plan.

So I've been using rogers for over the past 3 years and I hated my plan so much. It was absolutely terrible! I had a family plan with my mom and this was what we had:

1. 150 shared minutes


2. Unlimited weekends starting at 9pm on Friday


3. Unlimited calling between each other

That was it...for a whooping like $55 after everything a month! Like that is ridiculous for like basically nothing. Wow unlimited calling to my mom. I am going to call my mom so much now. And I was locked down in a 3 year contract!

Anyways, I was pretty fed up and I went to Roger's dealerships to ask if they could provide me with a better plan when my contract expired. And they said they had no power to authorize better deals and that I would have to call Rogers directly. I even went to one Roger's dealership and told the lady I wanted to cancel and her attitude quickly turned sour and treated me very badly. I wanted to slap her because they had such poor customer skills.

So I called Rogers directly and told them I was thinking of switching and wanted to see what they could offer and no one offered anything. One lady said they don't match offers. Frustrated and fed up. I had had enough with Rogers. I hated them and wanted to switch to another wireless provider. I did some research and I decided that koodo offered the most appealing package:

1. 100 Anytime minutes


2. 50 text messages


3. Unlimited evenings and weekends starting at 7pm


4. Per second billing


5. No system access fee


6. No contract and free phone

And after taxes it costs me a whooping 22.40. I should make note that Koodo says no contract, but it does technically have a contract. They work on a "tab" system in which they give you a free phone which costs a certain amount of money. What happens if Koodo will take 10% of whatever your phone bill is every month (before taxes) and use that 10% to pay it towards your cellphone. When I say take 10%, they aren't literally discounting anything, they are just treated 10% of that money to be used to pay your cellphone. Here's an example of how it works:

Say your new cellphone costs $75. And your monthly phone bill is $20 (before taxes). This means that $2 which is 10% of your monthly phone bill is used to pay towards your cellphone. Note that your phone bill is STILL $20. So technically, to pay off your cellphone it would take 75/2 = 32.5 months or almost 3 years to pay off your cellphone. Should you decide to cancel your Koodo service, then you just pay off whatever you still owe on the cellphone. So it's a "soft contract" as they like to call it.

I wanted to switch right away, but of course I had to wait until my contact completely expired. And then I would have to give my 30 days cancellation notice, and then after that I would be able to switch. And to add to the complication, I wanted to keep my cell phone number because there is "phone number portability" now. But I had to make sure I was still with Rogers, since they "owned" my number, when I ask Koodo to take that number from Rogers.

So after much thinking the plan was to give Rogers my 30 days cancellation notice like after my contract expires, and then approach Koodo like 3 days before the cancellation is official and have them then take the number away. This is technically start my Koodo plan right away and thus for like 3 days I would be paying two wireless phone bills. This was the best way to approach the problem.

So a few days ago, my contract ended and it was finally time to give Roger's my 30 days notice. I was actually hoping they would try to persuade me with a new plan considering how I'd actually reached the stage where my contract expired and I was literally giving them my 30 day's notice. But part of me was doubting that it was going to happen. To be honest, I didn't really want to leave rogers. I wanted to stick with a gcms phone since that technology was better, and also change service providers is a fricking pain in the butt.

Anyways, I called them and I was first put on hold a like 5 minutes and I finally I got to talked to someone. However, it turns out I was talking to the cable department (no idea how I reached there). The representative transfered me to wireless saying they could handle my cancellation. Waited in line for another like 5-10 minutes. Only to find out, I had to talk to the cancellation department to complete cancellation. Now I was getting frustrated. Was this some kind of stupid Roger's ploy to get me to wait in line so long that I would just get frustrated and impatient and just give up on canceling since it took so long.

After waiting in line for another 5-10 minutes I finally got to talk to a representative. I told her I wanted to cancel. And then she actually tried to OFFER me something! The first time someone from Rogers tried to offer me anything. I was open ears, but at the same time pretty sure I was going to just reject the offer and cancel. But as it turns out she offered me a pretty damn good deal:

1. 200 anytime minutes


2. Unlimited evenings and weekends starting at 8pm


3. Call display


4. Free rogers to rogers (with two year contract)

For only $25.14 after everything! Sure it was a little more expensive than the Koodo plan, but I got free rogers to rogers and call display. It's not per second billing, but the extra 100 minutes (or should I say like extra like 200 minutes since my mom never uses her mom anyways) will cover that. And yeah I am locked down for 2 years, but I needed that Rogers to Rogers since it technically keeps my family plan with my mom (she got the same package). And best of all, I don't have to switch providers allowing me to stick with my gcms phone.

So I learned a big lesson. When you want to get a deal, talk to the fricking "cancellation" department. All the other departments and dealerships are $^%&(*)_+ useless!